Growing Pains; B. Barker

These have been labeled by others as cycles, but a better analogy would be that we escalate over these episodes of alternating euphoria and depres sion in a jagged, ascending spiral of human development. Even in primitive societies phases of breakdown and revitalization take place. In the early stages of breakBen Barker is a practicing psychiatrist in Simi Valley, California. down individuals succumb in in creasing numbers to stress-provoked mental or physical diseases. They lash out against authority, family and friends and sink into a whirlpool of withdrawal, drug and/or alcohol abuse. One by one the strands of the cultural network strain, stretch and break as marriages, families and in stitutions fail. The jails neither re form nor adequately imprison, there is no spiritual solace in the churches, and the government becomes tyran nical and oppressive. The people fight, bicker and separate.

Both the individual and the soci ety at this stage lack the ability to anticipate events or to form a life or world strategy. Instead, they react in a poorly organized way to events stumbling from one crisis to the next as in a drunken stupor. No great de sign emerges and the insane reac743 744 THE FREEMAN December tive lurching decays toward non sensical chaos. It seems probable that the U.S. is now emerging hes itantly from precisely such an epi sodic breakdown into an era of growth and revitalization. In the late 1950s we saw our last powerful era of national unity, sta bility and solid prosperity. We ad mitted that Catholics, Jews and even blacks were perhaps Americans af ter all and moved toward the spiri tually cleansing civil rights strug gles at the dawn of the sixties. What -that entanglement brought about, however, was the greatest ideologi cal antagonism to erupt in this na tion since the Civil War of one hundred years before. White and black rebels in this societal confron tation forged powerful utopian links and struggled to bring us to a truer realization of the pluralism we had always preached but never really practiced. Their frequently shocking personal lives of drug and licentious sexual experimentation united the conservatives against the young reb els, and blood literally ran in the streets of our cities and universities.

Most of us failed to perceive or de lineate the nature or extent of that great rupture in our social fabric. As a consequence the Sixties Revolu tion was reported as a disjointed se ries of sporadic acts of antisocial violence or official retaliation. The youth saw the Vietnam War and its concomitant draft as but an effort to herd them into Asian swamps for systematic execution, and so took their resistance from civil rights to antiwar as well. Her oin, LSD, acid rock and long hair be came talismans of the revolution aries. The conservatives, on the other hand, stumbled through out rage, retaliation, Watergate corrup tion and straight into the camp of hard-core materialism. By the late seventies both sides of the civil war were exhausted by their nearly two decade ideological conflict and were ready for retrenchment. Interest ingly, during the period of social tur moil a massive inflationary era had enveloped us.

The Lost War on Inflation The debasement of the dollar nat urally turned out to be a far more potent instrument of social realign ment than confrontation had been. Hundreds of thousands were swept into the ranks of the wealthy by either planned or fortuitous involve ment in investments that benefited from inflation. On the other side of the equation vast numbers of Americans on fixed incomes were swept beneath the poverty rug as their paper money rushed toward worthlessness. The politicians, ever ineffectual, waged a war on infla tion, and lost. Meanwhile, the ever expanding government bureaucratic class indexed their own salaries and hence became an elite walled off 1985 GROWING PAINS 745 from the ravages of a plummeting dollar. The battle for social and economic primacy and survival heated up con siderably when industrial unions at tempted to imitate the daring feats of government bureaucrats. What they did not understand was that lo cal, state and federal government of fices and functions are geographi cally fixed-private enterprise is mobile. So, corporate managements by the hundreds stripped the teeth of unions by shutting down their op erations in one location, and opening up in another-often in another country. This accomplished what has been called the Deindustrialization of America. It also left government employees as the most stable and potent block of voters in the land.

Their numbers, their perks, and their outlandish retirement benefits continue to escalate to this day in the midst of marked economic instability. At the same time, inflation forced women out of the home and into the workplace. Previously unaware members of the female sex discov ered that they were likely to receive unequal pay, have less power and be subjected to sexual dalliance in the office and plant. This fact of life was of course not new, but our liberal middle-class had for years refused to acknowledge the true terms of eco nomic slavery. Additionally, these working women were obliged to leave their children in day-care cen ters. Recent sensational headlines have informed us of the too-frequent outcome of that tactic-sexual abuse and kiddie porn. Faced with so many onslaughts from so many directions, even the flaming social revolutionaries of the sixties lost heart. Many sought sol ace in faceless religious cults which could feed and clothe them as they continued their dance of rebellion against the powers that be. Some even saw the evil of their ways, ac cepted the blame for the social chaos about them, put on three-piece fitted suits and came in out of the cold. Few recognized that they, too, had for saken individuality for a cult iden tity, this time the cult of the corpo rate ideology.

A Reawakening of the Importance of Individual Responsibility Those of us truly aware of the ex tent of cultural fragmentation that had taken place looked to ourselves as the sole form of transport through life that could be trusted. The gov ernment' academia, the military and the media elite were perceived as failed institutions that had betrayed our faith. We invoked our own phys ical or economic survival over civil law, church dogma or manipulated public polls. We refused court ordered school busing by a variety of tactics, bought gold and guns, at tempted to dismantle taxes, and 746 THE FREEMAN December often retreated to the foothills. We were a society in disequilibrium. Between 1946 and 1961 roughly 64 million infants were born in Amer ica. Joined by increasing hordes of immigrants, they were labeled the Baby Boom generation. Having been raised in a period of prosperity, they walked into the job markets of the late sixties and early seventies and had doors slammed in their faces.

Behind them they left a bloated ed ucational bureaucracy which may prove increasingly redundant, and in front of them they faced an en trenched labor force unwilling to al low them easy entry. To make mat ters worse, many of them had not learned to read or write, and few knew the meaning of hard work. They are now our voting citizens, and they are filled with rancor. They are also now part of America's mid dle class. The Indomitable Individual Unlike the French and Russian no bility, the U.S. middle class is acutely aware of the pressures upon their privilege, and do not intend to be simply overrun by a fascist cen tral government or the lumpen pro letariat. We value our liberty highly, and recognize it as the ultimate standard of wealth in a globe of di minishing distances and collapsing values. Like all things of value, lib erty must first be earned, then defended. Gail Sheehy, the author of Pathfin ders (Bantam Books, paperback, 1981) captures the stubborn essence of Americanism in one paragraph: Much of the message of America's consensual ideology is conveyed non verbally, through a continuous spring of cultural imagery: the lone silhou ette of George Washington in a boat taking him to battle; the pioneer wife of the "big sky" movies, who draws a weary hand across her brow, straightens her apron, and tramps back through the flood-stricken fields determined to get the new seed in the ground; the lonesome cowboy after whom Kissinger patterned his shut tle diplomacy; the tight focus of two men in a space shuttle; right up to the hero's welcome given President Rea gan by Congress a month after his stunning comeback from mortal at tack. Our reverence is saved for vic tories of the indomitable individual over fate or circumstance, victories that are often beyond politics and re ligion. Mantras, prayer wheels, Ti betan death verse, martial arts, Mus lim fervor, flowing Indian or African robes, and kids cavorting about Yan kee fields draped in Siddartha loin cloths-they are all remnants ofvalue systems unconnected with the indi vidualistic spirit that is in the Amer ican blood.

What this observation pays special heed to is the powerful, unique na ture of the U.S. ideological frame work: the magical belief system that 1985 GROWING PAINS 747 the dedicated individual can over come all odds by dint of stubborn dedication and hard work and trans form his world. This dream includes inventors, singers, dancers, oil-field roughnecks, athletes and even poli ticians. It is the concept that if we can immerse ourselves with single minded determination into our own very special niche and return to the social system more than we take out then lightning will strike and we will become winners. It can happen to us at any age, so the secret is to persevere. The credentialed elite who exposed the Baby Boom generation to nihil ism and existentialism benefited from this dream themselves by vir tue of achieving status and privilege through conformity to academic rote. Awash with envy, however, they lusted for greater status and privi lege and taught the youth to doubt seriously the articles of faith in the American dream. Left with no ide ological framework, the youth went on a destructive suicidal binge until their anger was spent. That's why Johnny can't read. He was taught by a member of the Flower Child generation who had lost all faith in the system-including the belief in the human need to communicate effectively.

The present conservative backlash is a reaction phase to the era of con fusion and nihilism. If it accom plishes its task, and I'm certain that it will, then we will move into an era of growth and prosperity in which pragmatic realism is spiced with imaginative beliefs in the unique power of the individual. Such a for mula will allow America to move be yond the limits conceived by doom sayers who have lost the ability to believe in the indomitable human spirit. We will grow beyond the lim its of their imaginations into vistas of achievement that will dwarf pres ent accomplishments. We will prevail. The Entrepreneurial Spirit The fact that the American dream is still alive, and growing, is amply proven by the number of small busi nesses that open each day across our land. No educational system teaches us to open and operate small busi nesses' or to deal with failure if we flop. We just do it. And if the light ning strikes and our enterprise moves toward success we draw unto ourselves the skills needed to over come our growing pains. The dan ger of losing all and starting from scratch once again haunts our every step, but like the lonesome cowboy we buckle on our belt and spurs and tackle another day because we be lieve in ourselves.

Confronting the passionate indi vidualistic dream of the American entrepreneur is the growing rat-pack of government and pseudo-govern ment bureaucrats. Unable to even 748 THE FREEMAN dream, much less achieve the neb ulous task of winning, the bureau crats make a career of stopping oth ers. Will the Fed kill the recovery with escalating interest rates? The staid civil servant hopes so. There are already too many haughty mil lionaires, flamboyant technology ge niuses, high-riding athletes, and un stable show business personalities. In the dry, dull world of civil service there are no greater sins than wealth and flamboyance. Our present economic and social background, then, contains powerful antagonist forces pulling us on the one hand toward self-expression, transcendence and growth and on the other toward socialist repres sion. In a very fundamental sense whether we continue to grow or in volute and die depends upon which force has the upper hand. Your time, energy, talent and financial invest ments can either be involved in the growth and development sector or in the repression and dominance sec tor. As individuals or as a people we can grow a little each day toward self-realization or we can die a lit tle-depending upon how we direct our energies.

Individual or family-owned busi ness enterprises are the economic backbone of our country because they fit so smoothly into the ideolog ical framework that is in the Amer ican blood. When we lose sight of our strong point and move toward the dead -end structure and caste sys tems of older nations we are con demning ourselves to their same fates. There is genius and growth in diversity. We will decay and fall if we stifle small enterprises through repressive tax structures. If and when we become a country ruled by government and massive corpora tions our growing pains will cease, and our death throes will begin. @ Upcoming Articles JANUARY • What About Immigration? - Julian Simon • How to Gain Liberty - Leonard E. Read • What Is a Just International Economic Order? William H. Peterson FEBRUARY • The Constraints on Helping - Charles Murray • The War on Poverty Revisited - Edmund A. Opitz E. Barry Asmus Donald B. Billings Environmental Problems and Private Property SELF-INTERESTASIDE, the environ mental movement has appropriately focused our attention on environ mental degradation and the impor tance of our natural surroundings in general. The issue, however, is not whether conservation and pollution are important. The crucial problem is how to develop institutional ar rangements to protect our planet's physical and social habitability in the most efficient and equitable way.